While bumbling around on a D/s related forum, Master and rayne happened upon a person who believes that Masters and slaves that practice ritualistic slavery (i.e. Gor or any other form of training in which a slave is trained to have specific responses to things, know specific positions, etc.) are robots – empty shells that have no value.

rayne sort of took an offense to this, as she, obviously, is put
through the trials of ritualistic slavery, to an extent. And contrary
to popular belief, it"s hard work! rayne never imagined changing ones
speech patterns could be so difficult. she has as yet been made to
learn specific responses to commands, though she has learned some
positions (unfortunately the site she learned them from has gone down
and she hadn"t completely committed them to memory, though she does
remember most of them) and is working on learning the ones mentioned in
the Gorean books.

It was said that a slave who is
trained is not a true slave because they do not have to make
sacrifices. They are not proactive in their slavery and they do only
what they are told.

Sometimes this is true of rayne.
Usually when it"s what Master wishes of her, but sometimes when she"s
just being lazy. she plans to rectify the being lazy part. But this is
not the case on the whole.

Rituatlistic training and
slavery is merely one way of approaching teaching a slave her place.
her station in life. It reminds her she is property and she is owned.
It is a constant reminder of where she belongs and how she should act.

This brought up the question of "If a slave is so well trained, why should she need reminders of her place?"

slaves
are human and everyone makes mistakes. A slave, in one sentence,
spouting off, in the next sentence having to use third person to speak
of herself, instantly knows her mistake and realizes where she stands.
her only course of action from here is to throw herself on the Master"s
mercy. A Master pointing to His feet when His girl is starting to get a
little too touchy for His liking, thus forcing her to her knees, gives
her no choice but to remember her station. They are not merely "pretty
positions" and "learned behaviors". They"re humiliating reminders that
help to keep a girl in her place.

Whether one is trained
or not, none of us is a perfectly programmed machine. We all screw up
at some point. And having a way to immediately reign it in is a good
thing. It may not be for everyone. But for some it works.